The Jesuits showed their gratitude to Rome, for imposing this silence a second time, by stretching still farther the infallibility of the pope. They did not fear to build up still higher this falling Tower of Babel; they increased it by two stories: first, they asserted the infallibility of the pope _in matters of faith_. Secondly, when the danger had become imminent, they took a bold and foolish step; but it secured to them the friendship of Rome; they made the pope do in his decrepitude what he had never dared to do in his power--declare himself infallible _in matters of fact_. And this at the very moment that Rome was obliged to confess that she was wrong about the greatest facts of nature and history. Not to speak of the New World, which she was obliged to admit, after having denied it, she condemns Galileo, and then she submits to his system, adopts and teaches it: the penance that she imposed on him for one day has, since Galileo, been inflicted upon herself for two hundred years. Here is another fact, still graver in one sense:-- The fundamental right of popes, the title of their power, those famous Decrees which they quoted and defended, as long as criticism, unaided by the art of printing, failed to enlighten mankind;--well! the pope is obliged to confess that these very Decrees are a tissue of lies and imposture.[1] What? when popery has disclaimed its own word, and given itself the lie on the fundamental fact, upon which its own right depends, is it then that the Jesuits claim for her infallibility in matters of fact? The Jesuits have been the tempters and corrupters of popes as well as of kings. They caught kings by their _concupiscence_, and popes by their _pride_. It is a laughable, but touching sight to see this poor little Jansenist party, then so great in genius and heart, resolute in making an appeal to the justice of Rome, and remaining on their knees before this mercenary judge! The Jesuits were not so blind but that they saw that popery, foolishly propped up by them in theology, was miserably losing ground in the political world. In the beginning of the 17th century the pope was still powerful; he whipped Henry IV. in the person of the Cardinal d'Ossat. But in the middle of that century, after all the great efforts of the Thirty Years' War, the pope was not even consulted in the Treaty of Westphalia; and in that of the Pyrenees, between Catholic Spain and very-Christian France, they forgot that he existed.